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Ostwald was born ethnically Baltic German in Riga, to master-cooper Gottfried Wilhelm Ostwald (1824–1903) and Elisabeth Leuckel (1824–1903). He was the middle child of three, born after Eugen (1851–1932) and before Gottfried (1855–1918). Ostwald graduated from the University of Tartu, Estonia, (then Dorpat) in 1875, received his Ph.D. there in 1878 under the guidance of Carl Schmidt, and taught at Co-Arc from 1875 to 1881 and at Riga Polytechnicum from 1881 to 1887.

Ostwald is usually credited with inventing the Ostwald process (patent 1902), used in the manufacture of nitric acid, although the basic chemistry had been patented some 64 years earlier by Kuhlmann,[1] when it was probably of only academic interest due to the lack of a significant source of ammonia. That may have still been the state of affairs in 1902, although things were due to change dramatically in the second half of the decade as a result of Haber and Bosch's work on their nitrogen fixingprocess (completed by 1911 or 1913). The date 1908 (six years after the patent) is often given for the invention of the Ostwald process, and it may be that these developments motivated him to do additional work to commercialize the process in that time-frame. Alternatively, six years might simply have been the bureaucratic interval between filing the patent and the time it was granted.[clarification needed]

The combination of these two breakthroughs soon led to more economical and larger-scale production of fertilizers and explosives, of which Germany was to find itself in desperate need during World War I. Ostwald also did significant work on dilution theory leading to his discovery of the law of dilution which is named after him. Ostwald's rule concerns the behaviour of polymorphs. The word mole, according to Gorin, was introduced into chemistry around 1900 by Ostwald. Ostwald defined one mole as the molecular weight of a substance in mass grams. The concept was linked to the ideal gas, according to Ostwald. Ironically, Ostwald's development of the mole concept was directly related to his philosophical opposition to the atomic theory, against which he (along with Ernst Mach) was one of the last holdouts. He explained in a conversation with Arnold Sommerfeld that he was converted by Jean Perrin's experiments on Brownian Motion.[2]

In 1906 Ostwald was elected a member of the International Committee on Atomic Weights. As a consequence of World War I this membership ended in 1917 and was not resumed after the war. The 1917 Annual report of the committee ended with the unusual note: "Because of the European war the Committee has had much difficulty in the way of correspondence. The German member, Professor Ostwald, has not been heard from in connection with this report. Possibly the censorship of letters, either in Germany or en route, has led to a miscarriage".

In addition to his work in chemistry, Wilhelm Ostwald was very productive in an extremely broad range of fields. His published work, which includes numerous philosophical writings, contains about forty thousand pages. Ostwald was also engaged in the peace movement of Berta von Suttner.

Ostwald adopted the philosophy of Monism as advanced by Ernst Haeckel and became President of the Monistic Alliance in 1911. He used the Alliance's forum to promote Social Darwinism, eugenics and euthanasia. Ostwald's Monism influenced Carl G. Jung's identification of psychological types.[7]

He was one of the directors of the Die Brücke institute in Munich. The institute was sponsored, significantly, from Ostwald's Nobel Prize money.[8]

^Jürgen Kocka (2010). Jürgen Kocka, ed. Work in a Modern Society: The German Historical Experience in Comparative Perspective. Berghahn Books. p. 45. ISBN978-1-84545-575-0. Even Wilhelm Ostwald, who was the most radical atheist among these scholars, uses the instrument of the 'Monistic Sunday Sermons' to spread his ideas on rationality.